‘Breaking Bad’s’ Vince Gilligan, Cast Celebrate Fans at Doc Screening

Fittingly for the Thanksgiving season, “Breaking Bad’s” Vince Gilligan had one word to sum up his experience working on the cult favorite AMC show: “Grateful.”

Gilligan had joined his stars Bryan Cranston, Bob Odenkirk, RJ Mitte, Dean Norris and Lavell Crawford November 25 at Pacific Theatres at the Grove to screen their making-of documentary “No Half Measures” and talk about the new Blu-ray complete season set with fans and crew members before answering some questions about the impact of the show. KROQ DJ (and “Breaking Bad” super fan) Ted Stryker moderated the panel.

Cranston also talked about his emotional connection to the show that let him play the multi-layered antihero Walter White.

“The intimacy you create when you invest in each other and trust each other is just a remarkable [thing],” Cranston said. “Just this past year, everywhere you went, the fervor of ‘Breaking Bad’ was just so much fun to see.”

Others also talked about their strong personal connection to the show; Norris said he thought it was a comedy at first and Mitte, who recently turned 21, talked about growing up on set. Crawford, whose character Huell was more of the strong, silent type on screen, seized the opportunity to have a microphone and cracked jokes whenever he could.

Despite how proud he is of the show, Gilligan said there were still some things he might change if he could go back – such as roughing up star Aaron Paul’s teeth, which Gilligan said were too “pearly white” for a methhead like Paul’s character Jesse Pinkman.

He also discussed the show’s ending and whether it had hidden meanings.

“The theory that it was all a dream? That was amusing, that was fun,” said Gilligan, adding that he also liked the notion that the finale’s name “Felina” was derived from the chemical symbols “Fe for iron, Li for lithium and Na for sodium. That was cool.”

And while many fans had wished otherwise, Gilligan repeated the mantra he’s made many times: he’s glad they wrapped the series when they did because “it’s better to finish early and proud” than to wait for viewers to question “is that show still on?”

“We’re very excited about it and they’re getting started on the effort and I guess, hopefully, before next year is done it’ll be on the air,” said Odenkirk. “I’m just excited to put the hairpieces on and the gold socks. Please, everybody, don’t buy gold socks. We’re going to need a couple pairs.”